


Everything I've Ever Had

by Lucky107



Series: A Red, Red Rose [2]
Category: Hell on Wheels (TV)
Genre: 19th Century, Friendship, Gen, Homesickness, Mischief, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 19:31:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8766118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: For her, it's the Scottish Highlands of Lewis.[Season 1]





	

**Author's Note:**

> Caledonia - Dougie MacLean - 1977

As the last of the patrons file out of the tent, now ripe with the sweat and body odor of hard-working railroad men, Mickey McGinnes ceremoniously lights the hanging lanterns to reignite a sense of comfort within the humble establishment.

One of the guests lingers near the tent’s mouth until the last of the lanterns is alight.  She’s a homely girl - not yet filled out in feminine proportions - and she clasps a child’s toy to her chest as if by some nervous habit of old.

This one’s become a familiar sight here at the magic lantern show and, in Mickey’s mind, a welcome one.

“C'mon,” he says as he spins up a chair nearby the projection lantern for her. He’s a proper gentleman, she knows, and albeit a clumsy one, he never fails to crack a smile from the girl. “Sit.”

She does.

When Bonnie Mae sets that stiff cloth cat on the tabletop, however, she sits it down with painstaking care. “Thank you, Mr. McGinnes.”

“Mick-ey,” he says, enunciating his name in a playful jest.

His brother, Sean, rolls his eyes as they carry on like children in a schoolhouse, counting the night’s proceeds with growing frustration. It’s always the same when Bonnie Mae comes around; Mickey retires from his work early to entertain her and yet she remains completely oblivious to his affections.

Mickey turns a rickety chair of his own backwards against the table and leans over it, grinning like the Devil himself. “Say, you love a boy back home, lass?”

“Only the handsomest boy a lass’ had the pleasure of layin’ eyes upon,” Bonnie teases, her smile fleeting with the memory.

Maybe she’s not so oblivious.

When she touches the whiskerless face of the toy with an unspoken fondness, she no longer looks like the child the McGinnes brothers have come to know and that catches Sean’s attention. He sees hurt in her smile as she dotes on that toy; there’s a _reason_ she brings it with her when she comes to view the magic lantern show.

So, Sean gestures to the toy and asks, “He buy that for you?”

Both Bonnie Mae and Mickey look up in equal parts surprise and confusion, but there’s no humour in his eyes.

“Don’t be silly,” she insists with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Bought this me first time in Chicago ‘cause it looks just like 'im. Sweetest boy I’s ever met an’ I’s never loved me another since.”

“A cat?” Mickey asks, allowing both laughter and relief to flood his voice. “You loved a cat as if he were a boy?”

“Sure,” Bonnie Mae counters, matter-of-fact. “An old farm cat, he was, hangin’ 'round since well before I’s born. Bonnie Beau, me ma called 'im, an’ she, bein’ so fond of 'im, called me Bonnie also.”

The explanation curbs Mickey’s laughter as the smiles fade into a thoughtful silence.

Everyone who comes by the magic lantern show comes to remember the world that made them, no matter how near or far that world has become. And even though she hangs around after the show to share a laugh, Bonnie Mae is no different from the rest of them.

For her, it’s the Scottish Highlands of Lewis.

Mickey’s no stranger to the homesickness in her eyes when she says, “Didn’t have me any brothers or sisters 'til we got to Canada. Bonnie Beau passed the summer we left Scotland an’ I got to thinkin’ that severed the only ties I’d ever have to a place in this lifetime…”

Leaning back, Mickey offers, “Christ, I’m sorry, lass. I—”

“No,” she interrupts, acting without thought as she neglects the cloth reimagining to take Mickey’s hand. “It ain’t like that, Mickey, don’t you see? If it weren’t for what was, I’d'a never come to Hell on Wheels. I’d’a never met _you_. An’ I can’t very well be askin’ apologies for that, now, can I?”


End file.
